VOL. 131 | NO. 111 | Friday, June 3, 2016
Last Word
Bill Dries
Last Word: ServiceMaster's Choice, Democrats Regroup, Oprah Goes To Church
By Bill Dries
The ServiceMaster headquarters search is over and the pick is a real surprise as office spaces goes – Peabody Place – not the office building but the shuttered mall south of the Peabody hotel.
Word leaked Thursday evening with the formal announcement to come Friday and the Downtown Memphis Commission heavily involved in bringing this about.
So watch this website Friday afternoon for more details about how this will work and what incentives were involved.
The last scenario for bringing life to Peabody Place was a suggestion several years ago by then-Mayor A C Wharton to use the mall for meeting and convention space – a sort of annex to the Memphis Cook Convention Center.
With Friday’s announcement there are two more corporate HQ searches we await resolution on.
They are MAA and Evergreen Packaging.
As the ServiceMaster story was unfolding Thursday, local Democrats were meeting in Midtown for the first time since the local party chairwoman and vice chair resigned in April.
Interim party chairman Michael Pope is the permanent chairman for the 10 or so months left in Randa Spears’ term
The Democratic executive committee also voted to file a criminal complaint with the District Attorney’s office against former chairman Bryan Carson over disputed party finances.
Much of the larger discussion Thursday was about how to heal a party that has the majority of voters countywide but has an abysmal record in countywide partisan elections against Republican candidates who have strong crossover appeal.
Democratic leaders are fundamentally split over how to promote party loyalty and deal with Democrats who crossover.
The Democrats met where they have traditionally met for decades, the union hall on Madison Avenue that is home to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 474.
It is everything you would want and expect in a union hall in terms of its atmosphere and trappings.
But it is undergoing a much-needed major renovation including new floors and walls that are almost disorienting to those familiar with the trophy case from sports leagues of long-gone weekends, a long row of photos of the union’s business agents across much of the 20th century and an honor roll of IBEW members who served in World War II.
Hopefully that will be coming back in some form.
We promised more on the poll commissioned by the Memphis Zoo on public perceptions of the zoo and on the Overton Park Greensward controversy. And our story includes a link to the polling company’s memo on its findings for your perusal and scrutiny.
It’s part of another complex weekend in the park, one week after the first arrests in the Greensward controversy. Saturday also marks the return of the Overton Park Conservancy’s annual Day of Merrymaking. It’s also another test of the evolving parking and traffic adjustments in and around Overton Park.
The National Civil Rights Museum continues to go deeper and deeper when it comes to the history it explores. The deeper dive began with the recent renovation of the museum to upgrade the 1990s technology. In the upgrade, the NCRM’s reach for the individual visitor is able to go as shallow or as deep as each visitor prefers.
Saturday, the museum explores the Lorraine Hotel – hotel not motel – the original property bought by Walter and Loree Bailey in 1945 as the Marquette Hotel. It is a fascinating backstory that is yet another opportunity to tell the story of then and now and what’s inbetween.
Five In One Social Club is opening its second location in the Bicycle Co. space at 2575 Summer Ave. – the bike store that had quite the clearance sale last year, especially if you are into banana seats on your ride. You still have to supply the baseball cards for your spokes.
Fear not, Five-In-One’s Broad Avenue clubhouse remains open.
The owners of Flight restaurant Downtown are opening a new restaurant in Germantown in the Germantown Depot to be called Southern Social.
Further down in Digest, the no-gang zones used here in Memphis to prohibit gang members from even congregating recently survived a legal challenge at the General Sessions Environmental Court level.
But another anti-gang measure that gives longer sentences for gang activity will not be defended by the Tennessee Attorney General’s office.
A state appeals court ruled the gang enhancements are so broad that they add time to sentences for offenses that have nothing to do with gangs.
Behind The Headlines on WKNO TV Friday evening at 7 p.m. is a discussion about some of the larger issues of crime and punishment in our city in light of the recent spike in violent crime. Our guests at Keith Norman of First Baptist-Broad, Harold Collins of Operation: Safe Community and Josh Spickler of Just City.
We could have done at least five shows on this and still not covered everything on the horizon. But the half-hour talk was a good start to more shows on this.
It looks like Memphis is about to get its own version of the television shows “Nashville” and “Empire” with Oprah Winfrey announcing her television network will begin airing a new series called “Greenleaf” starting June 22.
It is her first recurring scripted television role in 20 years and the setting is a fictional Memphis mega-church, Calvary Fellowship World Ministries.
No word on WHERE this was filmed, Oprah.